See You On The Dark Side of the Moon
by Jack of None
Summary: Ness and Jeff find themselves very far from home.


**A/N: **Written for Yuletide Madness 2008.

For a moment, Jeff was afraid he had died.

He had never really thought about what it would feel like to die - it wasn't a subject that came up often, after all, and he didn't tend to read the sort of books that might have a few paragraphs of harrowing description of the experience. But the sudden darkness, the infinite feeling of falling, the cold shiver that had nothing to do with the temperature...well, it _seemed_ like the sort of thing that might happen when you were dead.

Beside him, he heard Ness groan. He hoped Ness wasn't dead too. That would be terrible.

"Where _are_ we?" Ness said. Jeff groped for his glasses - check - and his satchel full of fireworks - also check - and opened his eyes. There was darkness everywhere, but he could clearly see Ness sitting on with his baseball cap knocked askew. There was blackness below him, and blackness above him, and a few feet away a pulsing outline of a bush glowed neon pink - a lumpy, unsteady scrawl that looked like something out of a three-year-old's drawing.

Jeff moved a little, experimentally. He expected to pitch headfirst into a bottomless pit, but the darkness held his weight. He reached out a hand to touch the outline of the bush; to his surprise, his fingers brushed something that was almost, but not quite, like leaves. Jeff almost picked a few of the leaves too look at under better light, but thought better of it.

"I think...well, I don't know what to think." Jeff hated not having an answer to someone's question, but he didn't have any more idea of what was going on than Ness did.

There was laughing from somewhere - weird, distorted laughter, as though someone were giggling into a tin can underwater. Whoever was laughing didn't really sound happy.

"Something's wrong," Ness said.

"No kidding," Jeff said. "There isn't any _ground_."

"More than that," Ness half-whispered. "It's all wrong. All of it. Just like...just like with Mister Carpainter."

Footsteps. Jeff ducked, and Ness reached for his baseball bat.

The boy was wearing a business suit three sizes too big for him, and his face was wearing a round, blank-faced mask that reflected the pink light of the bush in patterns that didn't at _all_ match Jeff's current understanding of the mechanics of light reflection, and in fact made him a little nauseated to look at.

"What do you want?" Ness said, his baseball bat at the ready.

"Welcome to Moonside," the boy said in a hollow voice, and bowed. The mask clattered to the ground, and his face came with it, revealing a neon-green grin and two yellow day-glo dots for eyes.

In what was to become a point of pride for Ness in the weeks to come, Jeff screamed first. Ness leapt back, turned with a small yelp, and dashed as fast as he could in the other direction, and Jeff quickly decided he had the right idea.

They rounded a garish corner and found themselves in a street full of people with neon eyes, shuffling aimlessly down the street and assailing the pair with monotone greetings.

"Welcome to Moonside."

"Sidenoom ot welemoc."

"Enjoy your stay, yojne ruoy yats."

"Mani, mani, mani, mani."

"That's it," Jeff heard Ness whisper. His eyes were clenched shut and he had no intention of opening them at this point. "Mani Mani."

Jeff had only heard Ness and Paula speak of the statue in hushed tones. A golden statue of a horned man that gave off an oily sheen and a pervasive feeling of dread, the cult at Happy Happy Village had venerated the thing and had planned to do something terrible in its honor.

Jeff felt Ness's hand on his shoulder.

"Jeff?"

"Yes, Ness?" he replied, his throat dry.

"Why don't we pretend this is a bad dream and start looking for a way out? Paula's waiting..."

Jeff considered the plan, and found no obvious flaws. Cautiously, he opened one eye, then the other.

This was all a dream. Any moment now, he would wake up.

Just a dream.

People pushed past him, spouting robotic greetings. And there was that laughing again, very far away, and a rattling of metal on metal.

Jeff squinted behind his spectacles, bit his lip, and pressed on into the technicolor void.


End file.
